THE Hollywood-style launch of new game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II yesterday saw it sell out in record time in stores around Wrexham and Flintshire as people queued all night to bag their copy. We look at the top 10 most memorable press launches in history.
The £15 million launch party for the Atlantis resort in Dubai in 2008 made it the most spectacular and expensive hotel launch of all time.
More than 2,000 guests defied the recession to attend the event, celebrities including Robert De Niro, Janet Jackson, Denzel Washington and Lindsay Lohan feasted on lobster and other lavish foods and drinks and to make sure no uninvited guests crashed the event a two-mile exclusion zone was put up around the island.
Two launch parties, simultanioulsy held in LA and New York heralded the arrival of the product which would effectively save Nintendo; the Wii.
It had been talked about in hushed terms since 2001 but by 2006 was a worldwide phenomenon, sweeping up industry awards and smashing sales records as non-gamers rushed to buy it.
The widespread shortage of console units available in the UK only added to the appeal, and the console went from strength to strength, proving it was no fad but actually a significant leap forward in gaming technology.
The first queue member was spotted 100 hours, three days, before the iPhone went on sale in New York. It wasnt quite that bad in London in November 2007 but still some waited for over 24 hours to get their hands on Apple's much-hyped mobile phone.
It wasnt until they got the devices home that many users found basic flaws with the kit, and the backlash started almost immediately.
All of a sudden in mid-2009 Beatlemania was back. The band's back catalogue was re-released to something approaching mild-hysteria, and a large ad campaign promoting new music game Beatles: Rock Band launched across several media platforms.
Forecasts were good, initially, and it looked like the multi-million pound gamble had paid off, however quarterly figures painted a less promising picture as it fell well short of the projected million unit sales on the opening day, it seems most gamers really did let it be.
"New Coke" was the unofficial name of the reformulation introduced in 1985 by The Coca-Cola Company to replace the original formula of its flagship soft drink, Coca-Cola.
New Coke was introduced in April 1985, at the press conference at New York City's Lincoln Center to introduce the new formula did not go over very well.
Reporters present had already been briefed by rival company by Pepsi, and the flustered executive left to answer questions gave a stumbling description of the new taste, his background as one of the company's flavour chemists was widely ridiculed as a result.
Smith & Wesson are the largest handgun manufacturer in America. They make guns. They are associated with guns, and shooting. So why did they decide to launch a range of bicycles?
At first the new product was marketed at the police, then the company offered them for sale to the public, with the logo of the largest handgun manufacturer in America painted on the side.
The company also included a big incentive for prospective customers; anyone who added a handgun or set of handcuffs to their bicycle order got free shipping.
Possibly doomed from the start, this energy drink containing three and a half times the levels of caffeine found in the popular energy beverage Red Bull was launched in 2006, and pulled from the shelves almost immediately.
The Food and Drug Administration of America said that 'Cocaine' was "illegally marketing the drink as both a street drug alternative and a dietary supplement."
Not to be perturbed the company changed the name to 'No Name:' although controversy has dogged them throughout their attempts to be taken seriously as a brand.
Windows Vista was supposed to be the next big thing in terms of computer browser software, it was Microsoft's pride and joy, developed over four years and subject to an ambitious pre-launch campaign throughout 2006, which was the company's largest to date.
Reception was poor, but sales were later found to be positive, although people kept buying the previous incarnation, Windows XP as well.
Microsoft worked to try and rectify the many bugs that littered the software over the next few years, then decided the best course of action was to concentrate on a new program, Windows 7, and forget Vista ever exited.
The doomed RMS Titanic was an Olympic-class passenger, the largest in the world upon construction, notoriously a mere four days into her maiden voyage on 14 April 1912 she hit an iceberg and sank two hours and forty minutes later, resulting in the deaths of 1,517 of the 2,223 people on board.
Before setting sail however the Titanic had been hyped to an extent unheard of during the early 20th century, claims that the most advanced ship-building technology available were bandied around, and the fatal word "unsinkable" was attached to her in the media prior to her notorious demise.
The launch party for the 1997 film based on the ship and its fate was perversely equally overblown.
Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo was the darling of football team Manchester United for six years, winning countless trophies and smashing many records in his meteoric rise to become the best footballer in the world.
In 2009 after a few years of flirting, he joined Real Madrid in a staggering £80 million transfer deal that eclipsed the previous record price Madrid had set just months earlier.
He was unveiled to the world as a Real Madrid player on 6 July 2009, with 80,000 fans packed inside the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium screaming his name, surpassing the previous record of 75,000 fans who greeted Diego Maradona in his pomp.
Can you think of any other memorable launches?
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